Architectural Legacies: Thessaloniki - Istanbul
Four Centuries of Interwoven History

A Photographic Essay by Mark Forte

Architectural Legacies: Thessaloniki – Istanbul, Four Hundred Years of Interwoven History was first exhibited at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico in 2012. This catalog includes reproductions of all original panels, and provides additional annotation. All together, the panels contain over 350 images taken, processed, and composed by author and photographer Mark Forte.

From the text:

I believe that our image of a city is like a spider web, structured with long radiating lines, which help us give meaning to the city by connecting us at the center to the greater world around us. These lines are rooted in ourselves and in our understanding of the world. We connect these anchoring lines with many lateral lines of gathered information and experiences, giving us a deeper understanding of the whole. Like a spider web, our image is strong, yet gossamer. It is mostly empty, in fact. And like the spider itself, we must constantly reconstruct our web, filling gaps and strengthening it as experience allows. Still, the web remains mostly empty, relying on our understanding of the world to complete the image.

Architectural Legacies: Thessaloniki – Istanbul, Four Hundred Years of Interwoven History

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About the photographer

Many years ago Mark Forte received his Bachelor of Arts in Visual and Environmental Studies and a Masters of Architecture from Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. Thinking that this would prepare him for a career in architecture he settled into the San Francisco Bay Area. He was right, but he was also not especially convinced that he wanted to be right.

Photography was always an adjunct to his architectural work, and after some thirty years he realized through his photographs that what he was after was not about architecture at all. It was about the spirit of place, of time, of memory.

Now when he is not writing for children or teaching students about the creative spirit of architecture, he fully explores this aspect of the art which showed him the error of his ways, seeking inspiration in his travels and in the beautiful high desert of his home in New Mexico.

self-portraitBook Photo